Gen13 Mystic Training: Freefall
by Joshua The Evil Guy
Summary: Side Story to Gen13: Mystics. After discovering they each have magic, Harry Potter set about getting special training for each of his teammates. This is the story of Roxanne Spaulding's, aka Freefall, training as a Divination Mage.


Title: Gen13 Mystic Training: Freefall

Author: Joshua "The Evil Guy"

Rating: M (Due to Language, Violence, Brief Nudity, Adult Content)

Disclaimer: Gen13 and all associated characters and events were created by Jim Lee and J. Scott Campbell, and the original comics/events this story covers distributed by Image Comics, though are now owned by DC Comics. There will be brief mentions of Harry Potter, but he doesn't show up in this story. Other crossovers, mostly from concepts and magic powers will be mentioned. Niklaren "Niko" Goldeye belongs to Tamora Pierce, drawn from her "Circle of Magic" series. I don't own any of it and I'm not making any money from all this, so don't bother suing me. No spoilers in this one, just character development and a bit of rewriting.

Summary: Side Story to Gen13: Mystics. After discovering they each have magic, Harry Potter set about getting special training for each of his teammates. This is the story of Roxanne Spaulding's, aka Freefall, training as a Divination Mage.

 _Freefall_

Roxanne "Freefall" Spaulding was a free spirit. She was independent, rebellious to authority, open-minded yet self-involved, and full of life. In other words, a typical downtown New York City raised teenager.

She'd been raised by her mother, and they were as thick as thieves. The only thing that could've, and did take Roxy away from her mother was the day she was recruited to Project Genesis and assigned to Gen13. Needless to say, she wasn't exactly thrilled and did everything short of an actually punishable offense to buck their authority over her. It really helped that she made some awesome friends who enjoyed cheesing off the man as much as she did.

Speaking of being cheesed off, when they all started developing super powers, she was kind of jealous and a bit peeved for a while that she couldn't get her own powers. Then, right as they were home free, and it looked like they were about to be either caught again, or outright killed, she finally lost it and at the same time, found out that she had the coolest power of them all! She could fly!

More specifically, she could manipulate and control gravity, but really it just boiled down to—for her—the fact that she could fly.

After that, things were pretty great. Yeah, they were on the run, yeah, she and Grunge wound up running not just from IO agents, but the mob and several casinos in Las Vegas, and yeah, they ended up in a place that had _twice_ the annual homicide, suicide, and all around general –icide rates of Washington D.C., New York City, and Miami put together! They also were living in a _million dollar_ pad, beach-side, in Southern California!

Then the boss man had to go and discover not only were they mutated with super powers, they each had some _magic_ inside them to boot. Roxy was kind of burnt out on having new powers, seeing as she liked the ones she already had just fine thank you. And then to find out on top of having "magic powers" they were told that it wasn't all instant-know-how-and-instinctive-monster-fighting like in animes. No, having magic was about twice the responsibility and half the fun of having "regular" super powers, and requiring ten times the amount of work!

So, understandably, Roxy was less than enthusiastic both going into and coming out of her meeting with the mage that told her what her magic power really was.

 _Lynch Villa_

 _Sunnydale, CA_

 _April 1999_

"I swear, if my powers are to like, levitate and stuff, I'm calling cheat!" Roxy said.

"Your powers have nothing to do with telekinesis or the like, Miss Spaulding," Niko stated clear as day.

"Oh, you can tell that at just a glance, can you?" she sniped at him.

"Yes, that much I can," he said, smirking. "As I can tell that you are not a witch, such as Miss Rainmaker, or even more distinctive as Bobby and Edmund are. I'll actually need to utilize my tools to further narrow down yours, and Miss Fairchild's, true talents. Shall we then?" He gestured and then followed her inside.

Rolling her eyes and huffing with 'the unfairness of it all', she preceded him into the house with a grumbling, "Fine!"

Leading her to the conference room office just down the hall from the stairs, Niko again held the door for her before allowing her to sit across from him at the long-side of the rectangular conference table. There were only the two chairs there anyway, on either side rather than at the ends.

"Well, Mister Wizard, what's the verdict?" Roxy put forth, displaying all the signs of a bored, frustrated and angry angsty teenager that she could, and more.

Smiling understandingly, Niko took his time in walking around the table and taking his seat before answering. "Harry is the 'wizard', Miss Spaulding," he said, "I am a mage. There is quite a bit of difference, I can assure you."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever!" she grumbled, leaning back to glare at the ceiling, arms crossed across her torso. It had the _fully-intended_ effect of squeezing her breasts together to make her cleavage that much more noticeable, not to mention drew attention to her tight torso, given she was wearing a sleeveless scoop-necked belly shirt, pink to go with her hair. Not to mention some low-hanging daisy-duke shorts to ensure she had the most flesh on display. Living in the same house with a pair of hotties that could genuinely be professional models and be called _super models_ the very next day, it was all she could do to compete with them. _Especially_ with a pervert like Grunge as her love interest!

"Miss Spaulding?" Niko called, feeling a bit of frustration himself. He'd already raised one unruly child-mage through her teenage years, he dreaded having to do so a second time.

"Dude, call me Roxy," she snapped at him, still glaring up at the ceiling. "It's my name, after all!"

"Roxanne then," he conceded. "Do you wish to learn the nature of your magic, or would you rather continue seeing things that aren't there and pining after a dream vision that gets a little more vague each day?"

The pixie-teen froze stiff in her chair, before slowly sitting up straight and directing her glare towards the Sight-Mage now. "What the hell are you talking about?" she demanded from him.

"Ready to listen then, Roxanne?" he teased her a bit.

"My name is _Roxy_ ," she growled, holding one hand up threateningly, a hint of a sky-blue-bubble-glow flashing briefly around the limb.

"Your mystic talent is, to sum up with a single word; _Divination_ ," he stated, not the least bit intimidated. Well, maybe a little.

Nonplussed, Roxy sat back, unsure how to respond to that.

"There are tests, very brief and completely noninvasive, which can confirm my observations, but from everything that I've seen about you so far, young lady," Niko explained, "You _are_ a diviner. I would judge that it is part-psychic, part-sight, and mostly a very subtle sixth sense that you can't quite explain, hm? You're having trouble looking down at the table, because of the magic that has already been cast around it by myself, Edmund, and Miss Rainmaker. And when I mentioned a dream vision, you flinched. Just a little bit, but you did flinch. Which means that you had a dream, or possibly a vision, of Edmund being the perfect boyfriend for you. It impressed itself upon you so much that you keep trying to 'see' that perfect version of him in day-to-day life. Am I right?"

"No," she shook her head vehemently, "You're wrong! It isn't like that! I... I love Grunge! He _saved my life_! He and... he's like, totally cute and hot and, and, and..."

"So, you see his magic then, rather than had a vision of yours and his future together?" he clarified.

"Wh-what...? What does that mean?" she sniffled. No tears, thank god, but she really didn't like it when people questioned her about why she put up with—and kept trying after—Grunge.

"He has... a presence about him, doesn't he?" Niko smirked, like he knew something she didn't. "Some undefinable quality that marks him as... a hero?"

"Yeah! Totally!" Roxy was all smiles now, as somebody else finally got it!

"That is his magic," Niko explained. "A kekkaishi is _all_ about protection and safety. They are also about separation and sealing. By sealing, I mean _sealing away_ dangerous beings and creatures and... powers..." he trailed off suddenly and he frowned, looking more intently at the pink-purple-haired young woman. Roxy, without being able to explain why, looked down and away, ashamed.

"Roxanne?" he questioned.

"My name is Roxy," she repeated, more subdued and still not meeting his gaze.

Sighing, Niko leaned back for a moment, running his hands over his jet-black hair before tightening the ponytail at the nape of his neck and sitting straight once more. "Roxanne... _Roxy_. Edmund cannot, nor should he ever, seal away your powers! It is a _gift_! Once you learn to control it, you'll be able to do amazing things!"

"Gifts are fun," she pouted, still looking down. "Powers are _a responsibility_! I have enough on my plate with making sure I don't accidentally create a black hole in downtown LA. You think I really want to deal with being everybody's go-to-psychic girl with the cards and the crystal ball and the whole gypsy tent and dress thing and everything?! NO!"

Niko couldn't help it, he started laughing.

"Oh, my child, do you really think that...? Ahahahahaha! Hahaha! Heh, hah, hah, heh!" Shaking his head, he got himself under control and quickly explained himself before he risked a black hole in his head.

"Miss Spaulding... Roxy, being a Diviner has _nothing_ to do with the stereotype you are describing. Quite simply, and I do stress that this is as simple as I can make it, a Diviner is one that uses magic to gain, or use, information. There is a bit more to it than that, but again, it is the simplest explanation there is."

"What... kind of information?" she asked slowly.

"The most common," he shrugged as he explained, "would be in locating or determining the position of an object, person, or... other. You should also be able to determine the nature of most things, such as get hidden information about an ordinary looking item, to determine if it has magic, who handled it last, where it was made, things like that. If you already had full control, and maybe a bit of training in your magic, _you_ might have been able to determine the nature and types of magic of each of your friends yourself. Now then, that you are a Diviner is obvious in your aura and the very nature of your magic. If you'd like to better understand _exactly_ what you can do, we will need to do a small bit of testing."

"What do you mean?" she snapped, leaning back in her chair, arms crossed.

"You no doubt heard Harry describe me as a _Sight Mage_ ," Niko said, pulling out a couple more items from his bag. "That is because my magic, largely, works via my sight and eyes. That is not true of all Diviners, or any such mages in fact. Yours, in fact, may have nothing to do with your sight, but your sense of touch, or hearing, or none of your senses at all but something else entirely! For example, my student, the one that Harry helped me in retrieving the other week, her divination talents first manifested via her hearing. She's since expanded her talents and become quite the proficient all-purpose mage, but before we met, she was half convinced that she'd been going mad, hearing all manner of voices on the wind."

He finished setting out his tools and folded his hands before him as he regarded the distraught newly-unveiled-mage. "Now, I don't know about you, young lady, but I would think that one would rather _want_ to know if what they were hearing, or _seeing_ was real or not, before convincing oneself that they're either mad, or doing the wrong kind of drugs, or the victim of an elaborate prank or some such. Well?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Roxy sighed and unfolded her arms. "Let's just get this the hell over with already."

"Excellent," Niko smiled, holding up the first tool; a kaleidoscope. "Just look through it and tell me what you see, please."

"Just look through it?" she confirmed. Scoffing, she just shrugged and did as she was bid.

It was a kaleidoscope. Lots of broken, stain-glass-like images that shifted and moved when you turned the end piece. Except... Roxy wasn't moving the end piece... and the images were already moving... into _real pictures_ , not just broken pieces of color and shape!

She saw herself. Falling out of the helicopter. Everything in free fall around her, until her powers activated and everything slowly drifted safely to the ground. She saw the moment her Gen Factor powers first activated. And then...

The image changed, and she saw herself walking down Main Street, in Sunnydale. She turned to look at one shop in particular, just behind and off of the main stretch as all the other stores. Except... the image shifted and there was an empty lot there instead of a store. Until the image changed again, and she saw the store that she remembered seeing there in the first place. It had given her the creeps. Now she knew why.

Roxy threw down the kaleidoscope.

"What did you see?" he asked, picking up the tool.

She just sat back down and drew her legs up under her chin, folding herself into a ball of raw anxiety. At least she wasn't whimpering and rocking back and forth, he mused.

"What did you see?" he pressed when she didn't answer.

"... Evil..."

"Well," he remarked, sitting back down. "It _is_ the Hellmouth. I assume you saw that shop that you had mentioned earlier?"

She nodded, not trusting herself to break down fully if she said anything out loud.

"If you say something to Harry, he'll take care of it," Niko advised. "Ours is not the role to act, but to inform. It's not really a rule, more of a guideline that most diviners and similar mages follow. Your gift, to see and know things about the world around you, it doesn't give you the ability to truly _do_ anything about it. Why is it you think that I have so many 'friends' as it were? So that I might tell the right people about what I see so that _they_ can go out and do something about it."

"What if..." she began quietly, but grew louder as her passion rose, "... what if _I_ don't _want_ this _gift_!? Huh? What if I'd rather just be a normal girl? Or for that matter, a normal _super-powered_ girl, huh? How do I turn it _off_?!"

"Learn to control the magic and you can put on a filter," he said forthright. "A block, if you will. It would require great dedication and much work, but eventually you'd be able to craft a spell that would permit you to essentially ignore the majority of what your senses and magic can show to you. It wouldn't damage your soul or—magically speaking—essentially lobotomize you, which would be your only other options. To remove or cut out ones magic is the same as sticking a large needle in ones own eye and permanently killing a part of their brain."

They both let that sink in for a minute or two.

"So..." Roxy finally spoke, legs still folded up under her chin, "what you're saying is that before I can learn to 'turn it off', I have to learn how to use it in the first place?"

"Essentially, yes," Niko said.

"And you're hoping that once I know how to use it, I won't _want_ to turn it off, aren't you?" she accused him with a baleful eye.

"It has been my experience, even with those already... _gifted_ , very few people will ever willingly give up magic entirely once they know what it can do," he replied.

"One final test," he pulled out a simple folded road map and laid it out on the table, "just to prove it to you once and for all. Hold this over the map, and think of somebody that you know. It doesn't matter who, just so long as you know them personally and preferably someone that can easily be located." He handed her a clear quartz crystal on a string.

Unfolding herself from the chair, she stood and took the crystal and looked down at the map. It was just a plain old fold-out road map of the United States. Think of somebody she knew, huh?

Her mom.

She and Grunge had never found her during their brief stay in Las Vegas, having to leave town in a hurry thanks to Grunge being confused for some card shark gamble-hustling gangster. Closing her eyes briefly, Roxy focused on the last memory she had of her mother, keeping the image fixed in her mind, she opened her eyes and held the crystal lax over the map.

Before their very eyes, the crystal began to spin, faster and faster, soon doing wide loops as though she were spinning it with her hand, but she wasn't. Surprised, but maintaining focus on the image of her mother, Roxy nearly dropped the cord when the crystal stretched out on its own and practically slammed itself down onto a specific point on the map.

New York City, NY.

Blinking stupidly, Roxy realized her mother was in New York, and briefly had a vision/flash/daydream of her sitting in a theater watching a broadway show. _Cats_ , of all things!

She also saw the brief flash of energy sparking off the crystal, running down the cord from her hand.

She'd used magic.

"So," she said, thoroughly convinced, "what now?"

"Let's go back out and discuss that with Harry, why don't we?" he suggested, getting to his feet. She soon followed and they walked back out to the backyard.

 _Continued..._


End file.
